


The Successor Letter

by silveradept



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Epistolary, Gamemakers - Freeform, Gen, Historical Hunger Games, Hunger Games, Hunger Games Arenas, Hunger Games Tributes, Professional Turns Personal, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:41:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23194141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/pseuds/silveradept
Summary: Congratulations, Gamemaker! You've been selected to construct the narrative and supervise the construction of the Arena for the next Hunger Games. I, your predecessor, will guide you through some of the trickier aspects of building so that you can have a satisfying and action-filled Games.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 24
Collections: Worldbuilding Exchange 2020





	The Successor Letter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brachylagus_fandom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brachylagus_fandom/gifts).



Congratulations, Gamemaker! You have been selected as the project manager for this year's Hunger Games! This short guide will help ensure all the required elements for your Games will be delivered on time and with all the appropriate permissions obtained. At any time, you can refer to the full Gamemaker's Manual of Procedure if you need additional help.

A word of caution before we begin. Never lose sight of the fact that if your Games goes according to plan, at the end of it all, you will have one Victor and twenty-three dead children. I sincerely hope you have a plan in place for surviving however long it takes before the furor dies down and someone else becomes the most hated person in the Districts. You will be, for good or for ill, the face of the Hunger Games this year. I hope, for your sake, that your Games are _uneventful_. If, however, you are the person who has drawn the Quarter Quell, well. If there were any gods, I would suggest you beg for their mercy.

## Narrative

Onward to brighter topics! Since you were selected as a Gamemaker, the Committee enjoyed your concept presentation and is invested in seeing it come to fruition. While more detailed presentations seem to be a growing trend these days, remember that the concept proposed as the first of our Hunger Games was very liberally adapted from several works of classic literature promoting strength, adaptation, and a complete lack of adult supervision. If all you have right now is a concept, don't panic. Not yet, anyway.

One of your first tasks as Gamemaker should be to assemble your Writers' Room. Choosing a good stable of writers will help you take your concept and turn it into a more complete product. Many Gamemakers start with gimmicks or surprises or other technical aspects and often end up with an amalgamated mess of everything. The best Games are the ones that realize early on they are telling a story, and they make everything line up with the overarching narrative. Decide what story you are telling with this year's concept, and many of the difficult decisions will be easier to make, because you will be able to tell whether or not a proposal is in line with your narrative requirements.

Your narrative is going to have to take into account many different possible roles. While you won't know which roles your Tributes will be taking on beforehand, you can certainly begin plotting out some of your arcs and story possibilities. One of the few things that the Quarter Quell makes easier is that it provides a built-in narrative hook for you to wrap your design around. Otherwise, you'll still be relying on your writers to help come up with personas and narrative arcs. Of paramount importance is that your writing stable should include someone who can provide a sympathetic perspective to each of the Districts. A narrative that fails to include a way for each District to support their chosen Tribute will result in those Districts turning their energies to different, usually destructive, ends almost as soon as the Games begin. Riots during any portion of the Games will be seen as a failure of your team, which will mean you will have to answer for them.

Hunger Games I, for example, had a useful narrative set up, as the close to the rebellion story of District Fourteen (never, _ever_ mention that district by its actual designation anywhere. The Peacekeepers _will_ react far too seriously.), but it was marred by the Gamemaker lacking flexibility in bringing that story to a close. The riots that raged for weeks afterward were a stark indictment of Emily Greven's inability to understand the situation that her Games were supposed to produce. It took until Hunger Games IV before manual intervention wasn't required to get the Games started, and even then, there were several pieces of unrest that needed to be dispelled before the Games were finished. 

Thankfully, Hunger Games V was brilliantly helmed by Umber Malloy, whose unified design and theme of "Countdown" helped make sure the Games moved smartly through their narrative beats to the thrilling conclusion. Having a wide enough narrative idea will allow you to adapt to the changing circumstances on the ground. Your writers are likely going to be involved in building several facets of the narrative, so choose well.

## Tributes

Speaking of our favorite narrative disrupters, I would highly recommend getting to know your Tributes at the earliest possible junction. In some of our Districts, where an orderly process has been established to determine who will be selected in that year's Games, your writers should be easily able to gain access to the Tributes and begin to construct their character profiles and possible arcs for the story of your Games. In those retrograde Districts that still insist upon random selection, rather than establishing a proper rotation of families that will provide Tributes, your writers will have to work very quickly to integrate them into the narratives that you have already established. Media outlets are also very useful for gathering a significant amount of information about those randomly selected Tributes in a short time. If Caesar is still broadcasting, he is one of the finest in the business in getting people to divulge their secrets, desires, and fears. While there may be some reluctance initially, once the realization that sponsorship and survival may depend on how well someone can appear sympathetic or powerful to the audience, most Tributes are more than willing to talk about anything if there is the possibility that it might be to their advantage in the arena.

Understand the strengths and weaknesses of your Tributes, and don't be afraid to adjust their storylines to take into account any interesting developments that come from their performances before the oddsmakers. Adjust your weapons and surprises so that each of the Tributes can theoretically find a niche where they will be able to defeat all of their opponents, if they have the wherewithal to recognize it in time or plan for it. Keep track of any potential or actual alliances among your Tributes. A strong partnership or alliance group has to be taken into account in your narrative plans. Each member of the alliance will be trying to ensure they keep to the alliance while also looking for opportunities to betray their comrades for their own gain at the appropriate time. Such exit ramps should always be part of your narrative possibilities, whether as real ways for the individuals to gain the advantage, or as ways of catching a betraying Tribute in a trap set by the other members of the alliance and disposing of them before they can do any damage to the alliance. Incentives for betrayal should increase subtly the longer the alliance continues in the games, and increase sharply at the loss of each Tribute to the alliance. The temptation to betray should be screaming in their ears if the alliance are the last remaining Tributes in the arena, if not plausible examples of betrayal being displayed to the alliance's members. 

There are, of course, always exceptions to these rules. Gaius Declan was able to construct an entire script for Hunger Games IX without plugging in names, instead referring to numbers that were assigned randomly to the Tributes. Whether through synchronicity or making sure that the numerical assignments were actually less random than he claimed, the fill-in-the-blank approach worked extremely well for him, with several individual showdowns between Tributes that had come to genuinely hate each other and desire each others' deaths. Hilda Stonegard's Hunger Games XIII script really crystallized the idea where the arena itself was much more than just the place where the Tributes would fight by incorporating a greater-than-usual amount of randomness into when the hazards would fire and forcing the Tributes to make decisions about whether to spend their limited Luck to ensure good results when the arena (or other Tributes) trapped them in lethal situations. And, of course, the majestic script of Hunger Games XLIV that pitted the districts themselves against each other, with the unprecedented control given to districts to vote to make changes to the rules and arena features at regular intervals.

## Oddsmaking and Sponsorship

The Games themselves are a solemn affair re-enacted as a reminder of the futility of rebellion and a gesture of the Capitol's continued magnanimity toward those who rebelled in the past. The two children taken for the Games should feel honored that they have been chosen as the representatives for all of the sins committed by the Districts in each year, and that through their battle, and likely death, they will atone for those crimes and peace will be restored. 

Officially.

Because of this, neither a Gamemaker nor any of their staff should openly admit to the existence of the aboveboard and underground wagering parlors that have sprung up to satiate the need of citizens to try and make themselves wealthy through predictions of who will be the victor. 

Even so, you will hear much fanfare and anticipation about the initial assessment of the oddsmakers as to who their favorites are for the Games. Their evaluation of the skills, temperament, and surprise factor of every Tribute will tell you about the success or failure of your ability to create narratives. Even though you should never acknowledge them, the oddsmakers are the first indication about whether your storylines are proceeding as planned. So long as the Tributes' ratings are close to where you have them spaced in your narrative, things are proceeding according to plan.

Pay attention to any scores with significant differences from the role you have planned for them. Divergence of score is a strong indicator of deviation. Hunger Games XXII turned in abnormally low scores for the Careers of 1 and 2 and none of them made it past the initial melee. Fero Diplin managed to salvage the narrative by pivoting almost immediately to a Tributes versus Arena storyline, but the original notes for the Games had a much bigger arc planned out with the Careers taking on the role of winnower and reaper and slowly stalking the other Tributes until only they remained. Hunger Games XXXVIII was the first time none of the Careers managed a rating above 7, but Serah Gillian's chief storyline was Careers versus The Rest, and so all she had to do was switch who were the aggressors and who were the defenders and the narrative played out as designed.

One should hope that you get more than one Tribute rated above 9. Several Games have had a frontrunner in this manner, which makes any sort of _useful_ storytelling nigh-impossible. Most of the attention for the Games will be focused on the high-rated player, to see whether they will join any particular alliance, or whether the alliances will be formed specifically to defeat them before disbanding or forming their real alliances, or whether that player will be able to defy their odds and survive by themselves, possibly picking up a few kills along the way. Unless your narrative has managed to guess correctly about how the high-rated player will be treated, you will find them an annoyance to your carefully-crafted story more than they help it along. And, of course, there's always the possibility that they will end up dying before they can fulfill their role.

With two or more high-rated Tributes, your storytelling options stay flexible and you have much less chance of sponsor backlash if one or both of them turns out to be unsuited to your narrative requirements.

Speaking of the sponsors, there must be places in your narrative where they get to feel like they have a say in the fate of the competitors. The sponsorship of Tributes is another thing that should never be openly acknowledged by a Gamemaker, but it must be planned for, as, after all, you will be the one determining what kinds of gifts can be sent to the Tributes in the Arena. Most sponsors will just want to throw their money at something useful for the Tribute they want to see win. It is advisable, therefore, to keep a secondary list of equipment, weapons, and supplies that are thematically appropriate and that can be divided into categories based on how much sponsorship is being given. If a sponsor wishes to try and outfit their chosen Tribute with as much gear as they can, they are certainly welcome to pay for the privilege of it.

For the most part, though, sponsors tend to react better to the pleas from the mentors for help for their Tributes than the performance of the Tributes themselves. A good mentor is invaluable in gathering advantages to their chosen Tribute, but you will not hear their pleas and except when it is all finished. You have more important things to be doing, like running your Games, to be caught up in the drama and politicking that surrounds the sponsors and the mentors and the desperate hope that perhaps by getting enough people to part with their money that your storyline can somehow be averted. If it were somehow possible for a Tribute to subvert the entire narrative through charisma, you might have to worry more about keeping the mentors in as much check as you do the sponsors, but it is unlikely that anyone with that kind of skill would be selected, and even less likely that someone with those skills would volunteer to die.

There is one piece of advice I have for you regarding sponsors and mentors. _Never threaten both Tributes from a District at the same time_. Even if they are an alliance of themselves against the rest of the Games, the sudden departure of both Tributes from any given District does much to sour the relationships between all the sponsors and all the mentors for the rest of the Games, and will often gather official complaints about the procedure. If you intend to survive the court of public opinion long enough to be asked to run a second Games, you would do well to try and keep the Tributes from the same District separated and alternate between their groupings with the hazards of the Arena. Emerald Phrygia's Hunger Games XIX used "Mirror, Mirror" as the theme, but the end result was that Districts tended to be eliminated entirely as their pairs were often caught on both sides of any given trap. The sponsor complaints were particularly vociferous that year. Similarly, Cinnamon Gothel's Hunger Games XL used a swap mechanism that often meant both Tributes from any given district would be thrust into a situation they were unprepared for and then shift to a different situation they were even less prepared for, resulting in both of their deaths at the same time.

I personally find twin killings distasteful, and the sponsors and mentors agree with me. The "Double Tribute Trouble" Quarter Quell of Hunger Games L was particularly rife with them, which was to be expected, I suppose, but it does Gamemakers no favors when large swaths of Tributes are killed off before their storylines can complete appropriately, and it often creates more headaches than it will solve.

## Arena Design

Once you have an overarching theme and storyline designs for your Games, it's time to begin assembling your team to bring that vision to life. Engineers and architects should be brought in early and made to understand your storylines early on so they can begin to build the set pieces that will be the signature aspects of your Games. 

Your Games must have the appearance that any of the Tributes in the arena have the possibility of winning. Even if you know full well that the miners of 12 will be unable to defeat the Peacekeeper-trained of 2 in a direct fight, the Tributes themselves must believe there is the possibility that something improbable will happen and they will be able to not only survive, but be victorious.

This will sound heterodox, and several pieces of advice in the Gamemaker's Manual will advise against this, but the history of the Games says that avoiding the initial killing spree (as much as you can) produces a more satisfying experience for everyone. There are less riots, more sponsorships, and better ratings when there are more players in the game. So, as much as you can, try to provide your Tributes with options. Make it plausible for them to run away from the Cornucopia, if your Arena has one. Even better, make it possible for them to survive in the Arena, at least for a while, by not having to assault the cache. Or perhaps consider doing away with the Cornucopia in its entirely. Michael Gowron's Hunger Games XXXIV brilliantly deconstructed the entire concept with the "Naked and Afraid" theme for that year, incorporating large swaths of empty space, not providing any Cornucopia, and making both supplies and weapons relatively scarce for all the tributes. The camera crews were unhappy with it, because it meant significant amounts of extra work on their part to make sure no anatomy was shown on the feeds meant for general consumption, but as a concept, and especially in the execution of the arena design, it was a masterpiece.

Another key feature of arena design is that the Arena should be understandable to anyone who has managed to survive long enough to see it at work. There should always be clues in the arena space about what someone can expect to encounter in any given part of the arena. When not fighting each other, most Tributes will take to the puzzle of learning the arena and its design because their lives depend on it. Here, I have to tip my hat to Selene Sapphire's Hunger Games LX, which had a brilliant zoning system in place where the Tributes had to recognize fire jets that made some noise before they launched, quicksand that conducted lightning, and rodent muttations with size and camouflage (and, as it turned out, an impressive amount of camera awareness, such that several of the people watching the broadcast still claim they didn't exist). Two tributes from 11 were the favorites of the non-Careers that year by deciphering each of those elements and using them effectively. 

While your design doesn't have to be quite as elaborate as that one, you will want to make certain elements recognizable to Tributes, even if subconsciously, so they behave appropriately cautiously around them. Many Gamemakers think they need to add additional complexity to this idea, so that various elements oscillate between safety and danger, but unless these rules are also discernible, the arena begins to work against your narrative and you will find yourself scrambling to fill roles and make your Games look like something other than random elements firing off and killing Tributes. That will not only draw the ire of the sponsors, but the Capitol government will not look kindly on you if you cannot deliver them a story.

Marking your trap zones appropriately will also help your workers avoid triggering the mechanisms by accident during testing. Unintended fatalities are one of the fastest ways to end your career and have your Games taken away from you, so make absolutely sure that _everyone_ knows what to look for. Hunger Games VI was significantly marred by the large amount of fatalities involved in the construction of the arena. Between that and the blackouts required for the method chosen for most of the arena traps, there was nearly no footage available to go into the archives. It was not a good look for the government, and President Snow was very direct in how he handled the problems that arose.

Previous Gamemakers have been of two minds about the size of an Arena. A larger size allows for more time for the Tributes to establish themselves and fight from a place of their strength, but it risks stalling the narrative and the action if there are no active attempts by Tributes to sabotage and attack each other. Several of the Tributes of Hunger Games XLIII attempted a non-aggression pact after defeating all the other Tributes. Thankfully, Matthew Carbuncle was able to keep the proceedings moving by systematically poisoning the places where the pact was gathering their materials, but his arena design was too large, in that it allowed groups to exist next to each other without having to interact. 

Hunger Games IL, on the other hand, is still fairly widely known as "The Sprint", as the entire affair was finished in less than twelve hours and there was nearly no victor. The arena for that Games was barely large enough to hold the starting platforms and the Cornucopia, resulting in a much higher-than-usual body count in the initial struggle for supplies. Furthermore, with the shelter and cover the Cornucopia provided, the victor was able to ride out the lightning storms that were scheduled to strike on the death of a Tribute, which whittled the field down even further. If there was a saving grace to the way this Games was designed, it was that protection from the elements didn't mean protection from the other Tributes. Even there, though, things seemed to be spectacularly botched. It was a wise decision by the second-place finisher to strike the eventual victor as the lightning struck her, but that nearly resulted in a disaster of no victor at all. This is why the Gamemaker's Manual has very little to say about those Games in favor of the far superior Quarter Quell that happened the next year.

The size and complexity of your arena dictates how swiftly you want the action to move. Keep this in mind as you work out the details of your storylines and narrative with your writers.

## Bureaucracy

There is one final topic to cover before I finish, and it is the regrettably necessary amount of paperwork and approvals you must obtain at all stages of the process. 

Always remember that your Games are operating on a limited budget. A certain amount of creativity will be needed to get all the core elements of your Games into place, but this is why you hire good writers and engineers at the outset, rather than realizing halfway through that you need a better caliber of professional to bring your vision to life.

All of your narrative and storytelling decisions will have to go through the Press Committee to make sure you are not accidentally including elements that might inspire feelings other than loyalty to Panem, elements that would be in poor taste to broadcast to the District audience, or elements that might offend the sensibilities of the Capitol audience. With a strong case and willingness to do some convincing of the correct subcommittee members, elements that might otherwise be censored can be allowed through, but narrative elements are usually the most flexible parts of the design. If Press objects, it's easier to do a rewrite rather than try to push your ideas through.

There are more than a few grifters on the Committee on Building Codes and Rules who would love to push a naive Gamemaker into hiring one of the firms they will personally benefit from should they be awarded the contract for constructing the arena itself, under the pretense that an already-certified firm will have less trouble procuring materials and getting to work on time. Better to hire your own firm, after you research them, and add the six weeks of time to your schedule they will need to be properly outfitted with the permits and seals needed to construct your Arena. Going this route may mean the difference between an ineffective arena and one that is talked about for years to come.

The Committee on Games will demand regular update reports on the progression of your work. Most of these updates can be handled by the appropriate underling, to report progress on narrative construction, arena construction, budget expenditures, and other aspects of the day-to-day operations of your work. So long as you stick to the timetables that you lay out for them about deliverables, milestones, and your remaining budget, the Committee will generally wave through your proposals and design documents. There may be some perfunctory questions, but so long as you don't give them a reason to want to dig more deeply into what you are doing, they will be content with whatever you tell them. Some very frugal Gamemakers were able to hire outside help to coordinate, document, and build these reports, and if it happens to be within your budget, you should do the same. It is very freeing to only have to concentrate on the artistic aspects of your work, without being bogged down in paperwork and committee meetings until they threaten to drown out whatever creativity you had in the first place.

However, there is one person who cannot be appeased by anyone other than you. When President Snow has things he wants to discuss with you, he will phrase his orders as a suggestion, but that suggestion comes from the place of having read your narrative and design documents in far greater detail than the Committee on Games. For that reason alone, it is the height of foolishness to refuse him. More practically, his suggestions are usually meant to help your Games function as a unifying element for all the citizens of Panem, so that there is less Peacekeeper intervention needed while they are going on. He is usually very direct with his suggestions, so there should be little chance of misunderstanding what he wants to change in your designs. It is advisable to seek audience with him at the beginning of each new phase of the project. If he has no changes or suggestions to make, he will likely decline the request, but that is a very rare occasion. No Gamemaker has gone through their entire process without having a change implemented by President Snow, so your goal is to keep the number of meetings to a minimum, so as not to be perceived that you need more hands-on management than he has time and inclination to give.

I hope that this letter has been helpful to you. As I said at the beginning, there's a lot more detail about how to accomplish the goals in this high-level overview in the Gamemaker's Manual. You will find it exceedingly helpful at making sure everything runs smoothly. After all, you've already made the worst mistake of your life by succeeding me, Plutarch. Nobody leaves this position except directly to the grave. Your job now is to make the killing enjoyable enough to everyone else that you don't end up as the twenty-fourth Tribute to the Hunger Games.

Start writing your successor letter now, so you can have it done by the time you need it. That's the only thing I ever really took to heart from my predecessor, so I pass it on to you.

-S.C.


End file.
